15wilsonwu wrote:Btw, I don't suppose cycling is their main job is it?

You're right. The top handful of women professional cyclists make a living out of it (the likes of Marianne Vos, Emma Pooley, Evelyn Stevens) but not many do and, unlike the professional men, the women aren't protected by a UCI minimum salary rule. Even those relatively big earners have other careers backing them up: Vos suspended her medical studies to focus on cycling, Pooley moved to a smaller team this year to finish her PhD in engineering and Stevens quit her financial analyst job on Wall Street to cycle full time.

The women's peloton is full of riders with highly educated professions - doctors, physiotherapists, journalists, etc - suggesting that the sport itself isn't generally seen as a career option in the way it is for a successful male professional. They'll work alongside their training to save enough money for another season of racing in Europe.

The team we're looking at here is owned and managed by one of the riders, Rochelle Gilmore, who has made a living out of the sport as a businesswoman and has been running successful teams for some years, while also being a successful rider (and TV presenter, and every other role she can find to promote the sport and her sponsors).

If you're interested in this stuff, http://prowomenscycling.com/ is a good place to start. They do a great fortnightly podcast during the season and post heaps of links to relevant articles, interviews etc.

You absolutely have to read this - it’s not a surprise Nicole Cooke’s retiring, but her statement is explosive! So much here - no punches pulled on Lance, Tyler Hamilton, Genevieve Jeanson, the UCI, British Cycling and so much more. Seriously, click through right now!

Second fiddle to Jeanson during this time in Canada was a rider with morals called Lyne Bessette. Nobody can give back to Lyne Bessette or I the wins Jeanson stole from us. Throughout her career Jeanson repeatedly lied, just like Lance and yet now, she confesses that she had been on an extensive doping program since she was 16. The full story only came out, via quality investigative journalism.

Jeanson states, like all the others, she is "repentant" and all that is behind her. All these "born again" champions of a clean sport. They could be more accurately described as criminals who stole other's livelihoods who are only ever genuinely sorry about one thing — they are very sorry they were caught.

I do despair that the sport will ever clean itself up when the rewards of stealing are greater than riding clean. If that remains the case, the temptation for those with no morals will always be too great. Lyne summed it up quite nicely with a statement that won her few plaudits but was entirely right. I can't help thinking that the cheats win on the way up and the way down.

Tyler Hamilton will make more money from his book describing how he cheated than Bessette or I will make in all our years of our honest labour. The situation requires the very basics of morality. Please don't reward people like Hamilton with money. That is the last thing he needs. Donate his literary prize and subsequent earnings from such publications to a charity. There are many places infinitely more deserving than the filthy hands of Hamilton. I am happy to offer some ideas!

It is obvious that this issue is wider than the remit of the sporting governing bodies. It is no modest "sporting fraud". Wider society has to act.

There should be a rule for da ladies when getting there pics of rooling up thier knicks just an inch or so to show off the tan marks as i like to look at my tan marks when im in my boxers but on da ladies whoooo